EDITOR'S LETTER

The Madness of King George II

At his hobby ranch in Crawford the Gunslinger-in-Chief assumes the tough-talking western swagger of a child dressed up in chaps and a fringed vest for a Halloween party. But behind the brush-clearing and arms-out, bow-legged stance—both manufactured campaign props—it would seem that the president has little in the way of respect for genuine symbols of the great American West.

Consider this. In 1971 Congress passed a bill into law protecting the wild mustangs and burros that roam public lands in the western states, believing them to be endangered "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." It was called the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act and it was to be enforced mainly by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management. Cattle ranchers whose livestock roam on property leased from the government have fought it for years, complaining that the horses cut into their grazing land. In November 2004, as Kurt Brungardt reports in "Galloping Scared," on page 224, Republican senator Conrad Burns, of Montana, bowed to those interests and quietly slipped a rider into an appropriations bill that amended the act. The new law stated that horses over the age of 10, and who hadn't been adopted by someone, could be sold off "without limitation"—in effect, allowing many of these magnificent icons of the early American West to be sent to slaughter.

The last man capable of reversing the Burns rider was the president himself. Not one to let true iconography get in the way of political campaign donations, he sided with the cattlemen, signing the bill into law—thereby sentencing tens of thousands of wild mustangs to the slaughterhouse. Last year the House of Representatives stepped in to correct the situation, with both parties agreeing to reinstate the 1971 bill. The Senate tried to do the same. That move, however, was blocked by the appropriations subcommittee of the Department of the Interior. And who is the chairman of that subcommittee? Republican senator Conrad Burns.

It is by now accepted fact that the upper windbags in the White House see what they want to see, read what they want to read. Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press in September, was quizzed by host Tim Russert about a story by Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson that had run that morning on the front page of The Washington Post. Priest and Tyson had reported the fact that in the U.S.'s hunt for Osama bin Laden, the trail had essentially gone cold. Despite the fact that the show was filmed at 10:30 in the morning, the vice president said that he hadn't read the article—a major piece of reporting on the front page of The Washington Post. This confession came during that post–Labor Day period when both the president and the vice president had been dropping bin Laden's name as an all-purpose bogeyman in their fear-mania drive leading up to the November elections.

The Reader-in-Chief, on the other hand, has been behaving like a dim teenager trying to bluster his way with a brainy date by talking about his prowess with the printed word. In an interview with NBC, he informed Brian Williams about his summer book list, saying, "I also read three Shakespeares." Three Shakespeares—I mean, who talks like that?

The president added that he had an "ecelectic" reading list. A Decider-in-Chief who insiders say is incapable of getting through even one- to two-page summaries of issues—or "coverage" in Hollywood-speak—now expects us to believe that he has read 53 books so far this year. Fifty-three books? In one year? Including Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's acclaimed 832-page biography of Mao? All this reading by a man who is asleep before 10:30? Unless 52 of those books were on the order of "The Pet Goat," I simply don't believe him. And nor should you.

I implore you to read International Correspondent William Langewiesche's report on the November 2005 Haditha killings ("Rules of Engagement," on page 312). It is a powerful, unsettling account of what happened in that town in Anbar Province where members of the U.S. Marines' Kilo Company killed 24 Iraqi civilians including women and children. For this piece, Langewiesche, who has been working extensively in Iraq since 2003, also reported from Washington, Quantico, and Camp Pendleton, California—home base to Kilo Company. As for Anbar Province, his grim view now seems to be widely shared by top U.S. military officials, who have all but given up hope there. You finish this moving account with the thought that in Iraq, in this occupational quagmire without focus or end, the killings in Haditha may not be the exception but, rather, the everyday. Haditha may come to be a metaphor for a way of life in this divisive conflict—the Bush administration has not only created a sectarian civil war there but an intellectual civil war here—reflecting rules of engagement that only refuel the very insurgency the occupation seeks to suppress.

Christine Todd Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has been fighting charges that she was less than truthful about the air quality at Ground Zero following 9/11. Five years after the attacks, vast numbers of workers at the site now complain, not surprisingly, of severe respiratory ailments. Whitman's teary appearance on 60 Minutes, during new CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric's inaugural victory lap around the network shows, was as toothless as it was disingenuous. In my 2004 book What We've Lost (still available at better booksellers everywhere!), I outlined Whitman's reaction to the air at Ground Zero. On September 12, the day after the attacks, she informed agency employees that any statements about air quality had to be cleared through the National Security Council, then headed by Condoleezza Rice. The following day, the E.P.A. announced that it was "greatly relieved to have learned that there appears to be no significant levels of asbestos dust in the air in New York City." (A section in the original draft of the release had stated that "even at low levels, E.P.A. considers asbestos hazardous in this situation." That section was deleted by the Bush White House.) On September 18, Whitman pronounced the air in lower Manhattan "safe to breath."

In that remarkable interview with Brian Williams, on the anniversary of Katrina, the Decider-in-Chief badgered away at the NBC Nightly News anchor like someone who had been done in by the midday sun. He's a "close-talker," as they used to say on Seinfeld. Williams pressed Bush on what sacrifices Americans have made for this war: "Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are—we are—you know, we pay a lot of taxes.… Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover." This being the Bush administration, the president was of course not referring to the wealthiest Americans, the ones whose income derives from capital rather than salary. They're having a whale of a time.

The president might have added that many Americans have also sacrificed aesthetics by slapping magnetic yellow ribbons onto the backs of their cars and S.U.V.'s. A yellow "Support" ribbon for sale near the cash register of a local grocery store caught my eye because it doubled as an air-freshener. "Vanilla-scented." Previous generations donated rubber and metal and lived with rationing on gas and food during wartime; this one lays out a few dollars for a plastic ribbon and a fresher-smelling car. Another perfect metaphor for this president's war.

Graydon Carter is the editor of Vanity Fair. His books include What We've Lost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Oscar Night: 75 Years of Hollywood Parties (Knopf).